• by Wayne Friedman , 2 hours ago

Building on the sudden rise in consumer fascination with horror movies, Paramount’s "Scary Movie," the longtime franchise movie, won the weekend with a new edition, with $55 million in box office revenue, according to IMDb’s Box Office Mojo.

This was the 25-year-old movie brand’s strongest release, topping “Scary Movie 4” in 2006, which took in $49.7 million for its opening weekend.

There have been a total of six films for the franchise.

The film added to other horror successes in recent weeks. “Backrooms” and “Obsession” continued to score strong results with $25.9 million and “Obsession” at $25.6 million for the second weekend in June.

Domestically, A24's "Backrooms" now totaling $135.1 million in box-office revenue, with Universal Pictures’ “Obsession” at $152.1 million. Amazon MGM’s new “Masters of the Universe” came in second place, $29.3 million.

As with the earlier horror movies released over the past few weeks, Paramount did not need to spend much in national TV advertising for the entire campaign.

Just $2.96 million came from 700 airings and generating 161 million impressions, according to iSpot estimates. Social media coming from a strong endemic franchise awareness did much of the work.

“Backrooms” did even better with lower TV spend -- only $700,437; “Obsession” at $1.3 million.

Through five months of 2026, national TV advertising spend for theatrical movies is now at $359.3 million, from 80,031 airings resulting in 25.5 billion impressions -- versus $406.6 million over the same period a year ago, from 123,181 airings and 31.4 billion impressions.